Wrangling The Rich Rancher. Sheri WhiteFeather

don’t seem like you are. What are you thinking about?”

      She couldn’t stand the tension that was building inside her. And now she wanted him to suffer, too. He was being too danged casual. “That they were pink.”

      “What?”

      “My panties. They were pink, low-rise hipsters, silk, with a see-through lace panel in front.”

      He nearly lost his grip on the wheel, and she felt a whole lot better. She even managed to toss a “got ya” grin at him.

      “Don’t you flash your dimples at me, woman. You could have gotten us killed.”

      “Over an itty-bitty pair of panties? You’re a better driver than that.”

      He focused on looking out the windshield.

      She tortured him some more. “I have a similar pair on now. Only they’re blue.”

      His breath went choppy. “I’m going to strangle you. I swear I am.”

      “I’m just getting you in the mood for the cookie you were hankering for.”

      “Knock it off.” He took a bend in the road. “Just stop yapping about it.”

      She sat smugly in her seat, grateful her tactic had worked. She needed to take charge, to feel strong and powerful in his presence. “You wanted me to be more talkative.”

      “You think I’m kidding about strangling you?” His tone turned feral. “Or maybe I ought to kiss you instead.”

      Oh, my God. Now she’d gone and done it. She’d awakened the predator in him. His lips, she noticed, were twisted into a snarl. “You look more like you’re going to bite me.”

      “That’ll work, too. But I’m not going to do either.”

      Libby didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Her heart was practically leaping out of her chest.

      “We’re almost there,” he said, changing the subject.

      “Almost where?”

      “At my old house. You asked to see it.”

      “It’s way out here?” She’d assumed it was on the outskirts of town, but she hadn’t expected it to be this far out.

      He veered onto a dirt road, and she craned her neck to get a better look. A lovely stone house, a miniranch of sorts, sat in a canyon all by itself.

      He stopped at the top of the road, where a private gate blocked them from going any farther.

      “Who lives there now?” she asked.

      “The people Mom rents it to. They raise paint horses. We had a little breeding farm, too. Mom called it Canyon Farms then.”

      “It’s so isolated.”

      “Kirby built it for Mom when I was a baby.” His tone turned pensive. “Mom was originally from Austin, and her parents had passed away about three years before, so she was alone, except for me. She liked this area. Her folks used to bring her here on camping trips. It held nice memories for her. So when Kirby offered to buy her a place, she asked him if it could be in Creek Hill.”

      “Did she want to be this far from town?” Libby glanced around again. “Just the two of you, in the middle of a canyon?”

      “Not necessarily. It was Kirby who chose this location, so he could visit without anyone seeing him coming and going. It was mostly at night since that’s the schedule he was used to keeping. It continued on that way, even as I got older. I remember how Mom would fuss over him on the nights he came by, as if he was royalty.” Matt made a disgusted sound. “What did he tell you about his relationship with my mother?”

      “He said that she’s the longest mistress he ever had. That it ended when you were around twelve.” A clandestine affair for over a decade, she thought. Libby couldn’t fathom subjecting herself to something like that. But it wasn’t her place to judge Kirby or Matt’s mother or anyone else.

      “She was foolish enough to remain faithful to him, even when she knew that he had other mistresses or girlfriends or whatever. And then there was his wife and other children. The family he was protecting.” Matt’s expression went taut. “In the beginning I didn’t know he was my father. Mom just told me that he was her friend. I was too young to recognize him or know that he was famous.” He roughly added, “I’m not telling you this so you can feel bad for me. I’m telling you because I want you to know the kind of man Kirby really is, to get a better idea of who you’re working for.”

      “I know who he is.” She wasn’t going to hold Kirby’s mistakes against him, not when he was trying, with all of his heart, to repair the damage he’d done. “And I know how badly he wants to make amends with you.”

      Matt squinted at her. “I started to suspect that he was my dad even before Mom told me that he was. This tall, bearded man in a long black duster, this larger-than-life guy. He never got up before noon, but Mom would still cook him breakfast food, treating the afternoons as if they were mornings. Sometimes he would even sit at the table with his sunglasses on. I’d never seen anyone do that indoors before. I knew he was different from other people. I just didn’t know how different. But either way, he was just too important to my mother, too revered, I figured, for him to be someone other than my father. Once I learned the truth, I accepted it as the status quo.”

      “You must have been a highly observant child.”

      “Yes, but I was ridiculously impressionable, too. Kirby told me once that I looked like I was part wolf, and I figured my eyes were this color because I was supposed to be nocturnal, the way he was. But I’d get so sleepy when he first arrived at night and I was waiting up to see him. I didn’t understand how I could be part wolf if I couldn’t stay up at night.”

      “Your eyes are beautiful.” Mesmerizing, she thought. Hypnotizing. She could stare at them for hours.

      He scoffed at her compliment. “They’re weird, and you’re missing my point.”

      “No, I’m not.” She understood what he was trying to convey. How lonely Kirby had made him feel. How he needed to be part of the daylight, where fathers took their sons out in public, where there were no secrets, where normalcy existed. “It was wrong, what he did to you. I’m not denying that.” And neither was Kirby. He knew, better than anyone, how terribly he’d hurt Matt.

      “I was taught to tell people that my daddy was a cowboy drifter and that my mom never even knew his real name.” A sharp laugh rattled from his throat. “Even now, if someone asks about my father, I still recount that same fake story.”

      “Does your mother’s husband know the truth?”

      “She couldn’t bear to keep lying to him, so she told him right before they got married. Of course, it’s only been a few months, so they’re still in the honeymoon stages. But he would never betray her trust. Or mine. He stays out of our personal business.”

      “What about your ex?” Libby thought about his marriage and how quickly it had ended. “Did you ever tell her?”

      “No.”

      “Did you ever want to tell her?”

      “No.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because being Kirby’s son doesn’t matter to me, and I didn’t want it to matter to her, either. Besides, we had other things to contend with.” He searched Libby’s gaze, as if he were searching for someone’s grave. “Did you know that she was a widow? Like you?”

      “It came up in my research.” But Libby hadn’t expected him to make a comparison in such a disturbing way. “According to what I uncovered, her name is Sandra Molloy, and she and her first husband had two kids and owned the dry cleaner’s in town.” It wasn’t much to go on, but it was the only information she had.